Red Tail Escort by Richard Taylor

In Richard Taylor's striking new painting, the Tuskegee "Red Tail" pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group are a more than welcome sight as they close in to escort home a damaged B-17 Flying Fortress of the 483rd Bomb Group, high over the Italian Alps during the summer of 1944.

Flying first with the Twelfth Air Force, then the Fifteenth, the four squadrons of the 332nd completed over 15,000 combat sorties, destroyed over 250 Luftwaffe aircraft in the air and on the ground, 950 railway trucks and locomotives, and even sunk a destroyer by machine gun fire! The Group was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, their pilots decorated with over 1000 medals for gallantry. But above all, with the spinners and tails of their P-51 Mustangs brightly painted red, the "The Red Tails" as they were affectionately known, became the only US Fighter Group that never lost a bomber in their care.

Each print in Richard Taylor's new limited edition "Red Tail Escort" has been fully authorized by the signatures of SIX of the famous Tuskegee pilots, listed below.

Signatures:

Colonel CHARLES McGEE

Lieutenant Colonel LEO R. GRAY

Lieutenant Colonel GEORGE E. HARDY

Lieutenant Colonel WILLIAM H. HOLLOMAN III

Lieutenant Colonel ALEXANDER JEFFERSON

Second Lieutenant LOWELL STEWARD